January 2006 Archives
Yesterday, I posted this photo of Decatur Street on Virtually New Orleans. I regularly cross-post stuff from VNO to LiveJournal. In LiveJournal's New Orleans Community, I encountered Amanda Tusa from Central Grocery. Her comments, and my responses:
Amanda: FYI: Progress Grocery was, and had always been, a mere carbon-copy of our business nextdoor. Central Grocery was established in 1906, which was years before Progress existed, and now it has been bought out by some other Italian guy, who re-named it "Luigi's". They also claim to have "invented the muffuletta". pffffftok, fact: My great grandfather came here off the boat from Sicily, built Central Grocery in 1906, and invented the Muff. Now my Dad owns Central, and I work there off and on.
No confusion on this. I'm right. ;)Me: Hmm, the spelling is as varied as the places that make the sandwich. shame your olive salad has so much cottonseed oil in it these days, though...
Amanda: A.) there is no cottonseed oil in our olive salad. we use virgin olive oil. where the fuck are you getting all this nonsense from?
B.) i don't care how many businesses botch the spelling. Muffuletta is the correct way. It gets it's name because the bread it is made with is called "muffuletta bread". So, if other ppl are spelling it any other way, they are just retarded.
Me: the cottonseed issue came up in 01 or 02 or so. We were re-doing the "top ten muff" list for my website, so we did a head-to-head with half a progress muff and half a central muff. The central muff was so greasy the oil ran through the paper--nasty sandwich. It tasted funny, and we confirmed, both on the jars of olive salad Central sells in stores and by the big pile of cottonseed oil cans outside the place, that the olive salad wasn't 100% olive oil. If y'all have changed that and gone back to making an edible olive salad, we'll have to come back and review the sandwich again. I haven't bothered with y'all since then because I hate eating nasty food.
Amanda: You obviously don't know what you're talking about. I could give a shit less if you never come back to our store again. We have more business than we can handle already.
Well, far be it from me to eat somewhere I'm not welcome...
King Cake #2 for us this season was from Manny Randazzo's:
Last year, there were four Randazzo's bakeries making king cakes: The original Randzaao's and "Randazzo's Good Children," in Chalmette, Randazzo's in Slidell, and Manny Randazzo's in Metairie. The original bakery started the recipe, and the others opened up as the market grew and the family branched. Post-k, only the Metairie branch, Manny Randazzo's, re-opened.
Manny Randazzo's uses purple and green candy sprinkles, but otherwise it's the original Randazzo recipe:
Not my favorite, but I'm outvoted by the rest of the family. :-)
This is an easy dinner to do, and grilling the chickens is more fun than simply oven roasting. The orange sauce idea comes from one of my older, favorite cookbooks "Cooking for One or Two," but I like experimenting with variations on the theme. Sometimes I'll do the orange sauce with a marmalade base, other times a flour base. Last night, I went with a flour base, using:
half an onion, chopped
two cloves of garlic, chopped
3tbps olive oil
3tbps flour
1tsp creole seasoning
1/4 cup white wine (I used some of the rose' we had with dinner)
1 cup orange juice.
saute the onion and garlic in 1tbps olive oil until transparent. Add the creole seasoning. Add the rest of the olive oil and sprinkle in the flour. Mix thoroughly and lightly brown. Add wine, stirring constantly. Slowly add orange juice, stirring. Simmer while you're cooking the chicken, adding a bit more orange juice if the sauce thickens too much.
I tossed in a few button mushrooms as well.
My only gripe with this sauce is that it's not "orange-y" enough. It comes out too light:
Maybe I'll add some paprika when served next time. The finished product:
I'm breaking in the new kitchen slowly, as we unpack all the stuff we put into boxes and storage containers after the storm. Yesterday's dinner was Jambalaya courtesy of Zatarain's.
Here's the box
this is one of those basic mix-with-a-pound-of-meat dinners. I decided to use both chicken and sausage. I grilled up a pound of Manda Andouille and a couple of chicken breasts. I like Manda's andouille sausage:
Of course, one of the bad sides to grilling up a 12oz pack of yummy sausage, then slicing it up is I like to nibble at the pieces. So, to get the meat up to a full pound, I added a grilled chicken breast.
The recipe says to combine 2 1/2 cups of water, 2tbps oil, and the contents of the package in a potl. I went with just a few drops of oil, since the sausage is fatty/greasy enough on its own. Then I brought the pot to a boil:
Then added the meat and simmered for 25 minutes:
See my new stove? I'm happy with it so far.
OK, it's not homemade, but the good meat goes a long way in terms of improving a box dish. Served with some green peas and a tomato with some garlic-herb dressing.
Total cook time, 45 minutes, but the pot's just simmering for 25 of that.
Today is National Voodoo Day in Benin.
but obviously they have a different idea of what an appropriate celebration is... :-)
...was baby veal with a white wine and cream sauce:
The veal was basic, just browned in butter for a couple of minutes on each side. The sauce was green onions, garlic, sliced "baby bella" mushrooms, butter, flour, white wine, and whipping cream.
For the sauce, melt a couple of tbs of butter in a saute pan. Add the chopped green onions and pressed or chopped garlic, along with a bit of Creole Seasoning to taste. When onions are wilted, sprinkle in 3tbps of flour and cook until slightly browned. Stir in half a cup of white wine (I used Woodbridge Sauvignon Blanc last night) and half a cup of whipping cream. Add the mushrooms and simmer. Serve over the veal, and I included a little spaghetti on the side.
Dessert was petit fours in Carnival colors from Haydel's Bakery. Unfortunately, the two beasts I call children ate all but two before I could get a pic:
Sorry about the lighting on these, I was hungry. :-)
Twelfth night was the last of the "Yats of Christmas," but it was also the first day of king cake season. We waited until this morning do to king cake, however. Little-kid basketball and construction workers in the house until 9pm put a damper on last night's festivities.
Our first king cake of the season was from Haydel's:
that's a "medium plain." Medium in terms of small/medium/large -- this size theoretically serves 10-12 if you cut thin slices. We make it last for breakfast and dessert on the same day for our greedy family of four.
Haydel's king cakes have both icing and granulated sugar. It's a much more sugary icing than Randazzo's, however. We're split between the two. Justin and I prefer Haydel's. Of course, I prefer the old McKenzie's king cakes the best, but I'm alone on that one.
Every year, Haydel's puts a neat ceramic "baby" in their king cakes. They've all been various carnival-themed dolls, like a Rex king, or a Shriner on a motorcycle, or a peanut vendor. This year's is "Joyful," a masker walking on the street...
On the Twelfth Day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:
A dozen Manuel's Tamales
On the eleventh day on
Vet'rans Highway, trying to cross the street
with eleven Schwegmann bags
for the Crawfish They Caught in Arabi
Bus photo from Streetcar Mike, Channel 4 station ID from www.mcsittel.com, and Schwegmann bag from da OldieKing!
I used to be at
Kaiser
Now I'm working down da street
at the Tenneco Chalmette Refinery
Citysearch.com entry for Fitzgerald's Restaurant.
They ask you to rate the restaurant, and it's current rating is 7.1. I would have given it a 7 back in 1997...
before it was blown off its pilings by Hurricane Georges in 1998.
I have it here.
On da nint' day of Christmas, we drove down
Delery
in the
Lower Nint' Wawd.
Leave it alone, Ya Make Me Nuts!
for the Crawfish They Caught in Arabi
(photo of RTA bus on the St. Bernard-Delery line from Streetcar Mike; FD's house from Chuck.)
On da eight day of Christmas, me and Rosalie:
Ate by ya momma's
(if ya momma-an-dem live in Da Quarters, like dis pictcha)
for the Crawfish They Caught in Arabi
(K&B photo from Mike Strauch's K&B shrine)
Cemetery traffic got backed up to
Metairie.
at the
17th Street Canal
